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IShowSpeed confirms record-breaking Dominican Republic stream was botted

The stream drew in more than 1 million concurrent viewers, smashing the creator's previous records.
Alex Hopley Editor UK 8 May 2026

IShowSpeed has confirmed that his stream kicking off his tour of the Dominican Republic was viewbotted, meaning that his mammoth numbers were not created by organic viewers. Speed claims that he's spoken with YouTube, and found out that somebody had been botting his stream, which originally peaked at 300,000 viewers.

During the stream, viewership rose to well over a million concurrent viewers on YouTube, making the stream a record-breaker. However, as was noticed by other streamers including xQc, the stream had an unusually flat viewership code, implying that humans weren't watching the stream, but that it had been botted instead. It's not suspected that IShowSpeed botted the stream himself. Dexerto caught a video on social media that shows Speed admitting to the botting, but saying that somebody else had done it, finding out about it after speaking with YouTube officials.

https://x.com/nyrbhimself/status/2052119784251101645

https://x.com/IShowSpeedHQ/status/2052491214746689848

Speed is continuing his tour of the Dominican Republic. The immensely popular streamer is known for travelling the world, and livestreaming him interacting with different people and cultures from across the globe. His streams average tens to hundreds of thousands of viewers, so while it's not unheard of to see him hit a million concurrent viewers, he'll be sure to acknowledge that day when it comes organically, without bots.

Editor UK Alex Hopley covered the video game industry for Gamereactor, from new announcements and launches to the business behind them. He also wrote on tech, film and entertainment, and his coverage wasn't tied to any one region.
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